[eridius]

> Worst of all there are several redundant syncs possible. "iCloud backup" on default config backs up the entire device, including your Camera Roll. "My Photo Stream" also uploads every picture as well ass "iCloud Photo Library". This turns 5GB of pictures into 15GB.

That's a combination of misleading and outright false. What's misleading is you're suggesting that iCloud Backup and Photo Stream are doing redundant work. While it's true that both involve uploading your photos, Photo Stream only keeps the last 30 days (or 1000 photos), whereas iCloud Backup is a complete backup of everything. It must include your complete photo library, even the photos that are currently in Photo Stream, because there's no guarantee that the photos will still be available in Photo Stream when you decide to restore.

And what's completely wrong is your assertion that iCloud Photo Library is including redundant information yet again. This is wrong because if you enable iCloud Photo Library, then your iCloud Backup stops including the camera roll. If you have both iCloud Photo Library and Photo Stream enabled, I hope it only uploads the photo once, but I haven't done any measurements.

So no, this does not "turn 5GB of pictures into 15GB". It's not even 10GB (1000 photos is significantly less than 5GB).

[tuacker]

Fair enough, that was me extrapolating from the experience I had so far. I didn't dream to turn on the new iCloud Photo Library so far to see that it'd turn off the iCloud backup part.

1000 Photos might not be 5GB but still every picture gets uploaded, just older ones disregarded once new ones arrive. Now if someone comes home after a day out with a 100 new pictures this puts some stress on your network once while it is updating photo stream (if not done over mobile data) and backing up.

Where some stress is: Complete congestion of the network since 100% of upload is used and at ~50KB/s speed around these parts it'll take forever to even sync 100 Pictures at 1.5-3MB each.